General Synod Election Candidates 2026

Dear Friends,
Thank you for taking the time to read this
Election Address as you consider where best to
place your votes on the ballot. I hope that you
will have enough confidence in me to place
me as your first or second choice. Please
don’t hesitate to contact me if you would
like further clarity on any issues, as I’m sure
not everything on our minds can be addressed fully in a document such as
this.
I have worked alongside many of my episcopal sisters and brothers since
my ordination as bishop in November 2022 but am aware that there are
others who I am yet to meet as our paths have not yet crossed in an official
capacity. I am Zimbabwean by birth and southern African in upbringing, but
since being ordained deacon and priest in Carlilse in 2002 and 2003 I have
served all my ordained ministry in the North of England. I am a committed
(adopted) northerner with a strong emotional and spiritual attachment to
the Anglican Communion and the central and southern African church.
Before ordination I was a teacher serving schools in Kenya and Somerset. I
retain a keen interest in education and the spiritual development of
children. I am also, alongside my various church roles, a trustee of two
“secular” charities that are local to me. One supports disabled people
access welfare and social care and the other seeks to provide mental health
support through access to the creative arts. Both these charities enable me
to see and experience the world through a different lens.
An elephant that often appears in the same room as me and usually needs
addressing head on is my role as the Provincial Episcopal Visitor for the
Province of York. How does a PEV relate to the wider College and House of
Bishops, Diocesan teams and, indeed, the whole church? Like all of us, I
carry labels that are both helpful and unhelpful and we have to pick through
them to discover the person behind them. I am as Anglican / Church of
England as each of my colleagues and carry the same joys, questions and
burdens as you all. I hope that those with whom I have worked most closely
over the last few years can testify to that. More than anything else, with all
its peculiarities and complexities, I want the Church of England to thrive in
this generation and into the next. I love the Church of England and the role it
has played in the universal church. That is not to say that as a human
institution it is not without its faults, it clearly is, but I would like to address
those faults and all the challenges we have in proclaiming the Gospel today

from a place of love for the Church that God has given us and that God
continues to bless.
I have now completed my first ever term on General Synod and offer myself
for a second term as a Suffragan Bishop representative for the Province of
York. There will be some difficult decisions for the Synod to make as the
work on Safeguarding and Gender & Sexuality continue. Both of these have
dominated our discussion as a Church in recent years, and we’ve often
found ourselves going places that were never intended, often because of
poor process and/or poor use of language. This in turn led to a breakdown of
trusting relationships. Voting patterns were often interpreted by some as
malicious rather than as prayerful responses to complex situations.
If you place your trust in me once again, I commit myself to working for a
more reconciled approach so that whatever legislation emerges (on any
given issue), General Synod members will be known for demonstrating the
Dominical command to “love as I have loved you” so that “all people may
know that you are my disciples.”
General Synod is a legislative body, but we legislate in order to proclaim the
love of God revealed in Jesus Christ for this nation and the world at large.
For the avoidance of doubt, I support the position General Synod eventually
reached on LLF which included the Prayers of Love and Faith and a
commitment to the inherited doctrine of marriage.
Concerning
Safeguarding, we need to be very careful with mandatory reporting
requirements that go above and beyond national law. A lot of careful work
needs to be done before General Synod legislates further on this. These two
sensitive topics will no doubt dominate the next Quinquennium and, along
with debates about equitable financial settlements, the importance of the
parish, inclusion, the environment and so much more, I want to hear the
quiet voices that often get marginalised during debates so that thoughtful,
well considered legislation can be passed that will stand the test of time.
I am an introvert and not, therefore, always the first to speak or the loudest
in the room, but if elected once again promise to be a prayerful and
supportive member of the House, representing the vitality and diversity of
the North of England within General Synod and the House of Bishops.
Stephen

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